Page 56 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1. Born in the USSR

Independently of the sound “accompaniment”, external illumination and the position of

my body I could disconnect myself for the time I needed and get back into an active state
in seconds. After long “training” I could switch myself off sitting in a chair and
immediately switch on when hearing the sound of the door opening or any other sound,
which I considered worthy of my attention. I could sleep with crackle of tele-phones and
buzz of voices, but woke up to the quiet bell of the alarm clock. So, it is possible to get
accustomed to almost anything when life forces you to.

To a certain extent I had prepared myself for this whilst still a student—when
preparing for exams, I would disconnect myself for ten minutes out of every fifty
reacting only to the bell of the alarm clock. It allowed me to learn quickly enormous
volumes of information. These skills proved to be useful in the army and developed there
even more, which I consider a very positive acquisition... So, serving in the army was a
bit tense, but I found it positive rather than negative.

The army that should have been the grave of my scientific career turned out to be
very useful to me. Of course, I was not engaged in the theory of wave processes, as it
was accepted in the classical school of theoretical physics. To my deep concern,

mathematical equations, with which physicists-theorists “play”, are to a greater degree
games of the mind, but not science in the full sense of the word. Postulates once
introduced into science remained white spots for good; scientists simply did not pay
attention to them, ignoring the fact that there was nothing behind them.

Thus, it was this kind of scientific career that “died” when I went to the army and,
to be honest, I was not interested in it. But, a chain of casual and not so casual events
would only happen to me because I found myself in the army. That is why I am grateful
to the dean of my faculty; be-cause someone did not want to serve in the army and
needed my place, and received it from him via “the backstairs”, and I was sent to the
army instead!

Numerous duty services also had its positive side. By the end of 1984 I had
accumulated compensatory holidays for almost two weeks and decided to use them to
celebrate the New Year. The unit commander agreed and even gave me permission to
go to another city. For those who are unaware of army rules I’ll explain the situation a
little.

An officer or an ensign must be within the reach of military messengers even on
their week-ends or festive days. The officer must report where he can be found or called
in case of the alarm even when dating a girl. Certainly, not everyone did it when they,
for example, went to Odessa to spend several hours, but if they were sought and were
unable to be found quickly, this officer or ensign would receive a serious penalty,
especially in case of an incident in their subdivision. Therefore, when I officially got
almost two weeks of compensatory holidays, I could not simply go where I wanted.

First, I received the unit commander’s authorization and then got all necessary
papers in the office. As an officer I had my military identity card and without these
papers any patrol could detain me and put me in the guardhouse. On my receiving these
documents, I had nothing to worry about.

By the way, military patrols never checked my documents, although I “came”
across them a lot.

But, nevertheless, in this case I preferred to stick to rules...

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